Then a different voice shattered the moment, Megan's voice, raw with fury:
"You fucking bitch!" A blur of motion as Megan lunged past me, slamming into Julia with enough force to send them both crashing against the bathroom counter. Julia's phone clattered to the floor, sliding under the sinks, but the video continued playing, the sound coming on, and now my own screams were now audible and tinny in the chaos.
"I'll fucking kill you," Megan was screaming, her fists connecting with Julia's face, her arms, anywhere she could reach. Julia's friends scattered, shrieking in alarm.
"Someone get Ryder!" Luce shouted, her arms wrapping around me as I collapsed fully, curling into myself on the bathroom floor. "Now!"
The sounds of the fight seemed distant beneath the roaring in my ears, beneath the terrible sounds still coming from the phone, my pleading, their laughter, the rhythmic slapping of flesh on flesh. I pressed my hands over my ears, but it did nothing to block out the memory of those sounds, the feeling of their hands, the smell of them, the taste of blood in my mouth.
"It's not real, it's not happening now, you're safe," Luce was saying, her words a desperate litany against my ear. "Cade, please, look at me. You're at Regents. You're safe. He can't hurt you anymore." But he could. He was. Every person who watched that video was Damien, violating me all over again. The thought that strangers had seen me like that, had watched my torture,my humiliation, my dehumanisation for their entertainment, was unbearable. I retched, bile burning my throat.
The bathroom door crashed open, and suddenly Ryder was there, his face white with rage as he took in the scene, Megan and Julia still grappling on the floor, Luce holding me as I fell apart, the damning sound of the video still playing from somewhere beneath the sinks.
"Get that fucking phone," he snarled at one of the housemen who had followed him in. I saw a foot come down on the phone, silencing my screams. Then Ryder was kneeling beside me, his hands hovering inches from my skin, afraid to touch, to trigger me further.
"Poison," he said, his voice breaking on the word. "Cade, look at me. Please." I couldn't. I couldn't look at anyone, couldn't bear to see the pity, the disgust, the knowledge in their eyes. Everyone would know now. Everyone would have seen what had been done to me, what I had been reduced to.
I closed my eyes, tears seeping from beneath my lashes to pool on the floor. But even in darkness, I couldn't escape the images burned into my memory, my own face contorted in pain, my body used and discarded, my humanity reduced to nothing more than flesh to be violated. Damien had won. He wasn't just in my nightmares anymore. He was everywhere, in every glance, every whisper, every phone and computer screen. And there was nothing I could do to take back what he had stolen from me. Nothing I could do to make myself whole again.
The sound of Ryder's fist slamming into the wall reverberated through the living room, punctuating his rage with a physical exclamation mark. His knuckles left a smear of blood on the cream paint, but he didn't seem to notice or care.
"I'm going to fucking kill her," he snarled, his face contorted into something barely recognisable.
"That bitch is dead. You hear me? Dead!"
I stood with my arms crossed, my own fury a cold, calculating thing compared to Ryder's volcanic eruption. I'd just walked through the door after a wasted day chasing another false lead in Halifax, only to find Covenant House in chaos. Cade locked herself in her bedroom. Ryder is on the verge of committing murder. And Cole, caught in the middle, was trying to maintain what little control remained.
"Ryder, you need to calm down," Cole said, his mismatched eyes tracking Ryder's frantic pacing. "This isn't helping Cade."
"Calm down?" Ryder whirled on him, a twisted laugh escaping his throat. "You want me to calm down after what that cunt did? She showed Cade the fucking videos, Cole! She played them in front of everyone!"
My stomach dropped, the cold rage in my veins crystallising into something sharper, more dangerous. The videos. The ones we'd been frantically trying to scrub from the internet for weeks. The ones we'd sworn Cade would never know about.
"What exactly happened?" I asked, my voice deceptively steady despite the storm brewing inside me. Cole ran a hand through his hair, exhaustion etched into every line of his face. "Julia cornered Cade in the bathroom. Showed her one of the videos on her phone. By the time Ryder and I got there, Cade was..." He trailed off, but I could fill in the blanks. Broken. Shattered. Reliving every moment of her nightmare.
"And Julia?" I asked, already calculating the most efficient way to destroy her life.
"Megan got to her first," Cole said, a grim satisfaction in his tone. "Broke her nose, cracked a few ribs. Security pulled them apart."
"Not good enough," Ryder spat, resuming his pacing. "She needs to suffer. She needs to understand what she's done."
I found myself nodding in agreement, my mind already spinning through scenarios, each more violent than the last. Julia deserved worse than a broken nose for what she'd done to Cade. She deserved to feel a fraction of the terror, the pain, the violation that Cade had endured.
"Where is she now?" I asked, already moving toward the door. "Julia."
"Logan, don't," Cole warned, stepping into my path. "We need to focus on Cade right now. She's barely holding it together upstairs." I hesitated, torn between the urge to hunt Julia down and the knowledge that Cade needed me. Needed us. But the thought of facing her, of seeing the fresh devastation in her eyes, knowing I had failed yet again to protect her, was almost unbearable.
"Don’t worry," Ryder said, his voice suddenly quiet, dangerous. "I'll handle Julia." Before either of us could react, Ryder was moving, snatching his keys from the hook by the door and storming out. The front door slammed behind him with enough force to rattle the windows, leaving a heavy silence in his wake.
"Fuck," Cole muttered, already grabbing his own jacket. "I need to go after him before he does something we can't fix."
"I'll go," I offered quickly, relief flooding me at the excuse to avoid the more challenging task. "You stay with Cade." Cole turned to me, his expression hardening.
"No, Logan. I'm going after Ryder because I'm the only one who can talk him down right now. You're staying here because Cade needs you, and it's time you stopped being a fucking coward about it."
His words hit like a physical blow, all the more painful for their accuracy. I had been avoiding Cade. Throwing myself into the hunt for Damien, spending more time with my father'ssecurity teams than at Covenant House. Anything to escape the crushing guilt that threatened to suffocate me every time I looked at her.
"She doesn't want to see me," I said, hating the weakness in my voice. "Not after everything that's happened." Cole stepped closer, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper.
